OfBusiness, business-to-business commerce and lending platform announced on December 20 that it had raised $325 million from investors Alpha Wave Global, Tiger Global Management, and SoftBank. OfBusiness’ valuation has more than quadrupled in the last year, due to unprecedented funding growth. OfBusiness Tech (OFB Tech) is a technology-enabled platform for the procurement and credit of raw materials by SMEs operating in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.
OfBusiness has turned into a Unicorn with a $1.5 Bn valuation, Asish Mohapatra, co-founder, and CEO of OfBusiness said even as the company is planning to file its papers for an initial public offering (IPO) by late 2022 with a domestic listing by year’s end. The company is expected to hire investment bankers for its IPO in March-June next year. When it goes public, the company’s value will be between $10-15 billion, said two people familiar with the matter, although Mohapatra could not comment on this.
OfBusiness’ commerce arm will report $1.7 billion in revenue and a profit of $42.5 million in FY22, while its lending arm will report $360 million in revenue and $21.6 million in profit, Mohapatra said. We have been profitable for many years, and going public is the natural next step. Our commerce and lending businesses are also expected to grow at 4x and 2x respectively the year after next, Mohapatra added further.
“In India, the B2B market has a long way to go given its depth and fragmentation. We believe that we are at the beginning of a B2B revolution,” he said.
Some of the company’s other investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Creation Investments, Matrix Partners India, Marshall Wace, Zodius, and Panthera Growth Fund. A recent round of financing saw Creation, Matrix, and Zodius sell about $35 million each in secondary shares to Alpha Wave and others, while 80 employees sold stock options (Employee Stock Options) to investors, giving them a windfall.
Close to 2.7 million small businesses use the company’s software platform BidAssist to find government contracts, the company says. This year, B2B platforms have received significant investor interest, and companies have seen their valuations jump multiple times every few months, a phenomenon previously unheard of. The funding round is OfBusiness’s fourth in 2021. It was valued at $800 million in April, $1.5 billion in July, $3 billion in September, and $5 billion now.
